To Walk Along the Starlit Path
by GMCH
Summary: With the ability to forge hyperspace routes between galaxies, the battle between Jedi and Sith has become an intergalactic one. Above a force-deaf world a dogfight begins, the consequence of which awakens three teenage humans to The Force.
1. Prologue

To Walk Along the Starlit Path

* * *

Prologue

"We've found him," the Jedi said to his padawan. The dark ship zipped out of the shadow of the Moon and darted towards them. It was like a raven gone mad. Its wings were shaped in a kind of sickle so that it almost seemed as if they were made for the purpose of slicing open other craft. Its dark color made it nearly impossible to identify it in the darkness of space so they would have to rely on sensors and the help of the astromech droid that whirred in warning just outside the cockpit.

_Or rather he found us_. The padawan thought to himself, manning the rear guns of the fighter. _If he was really hiding, he wouldn't have come at us now. This is an ambush._ But he dare not speak his true mind to his master, who would see it as disrespectful. But now he was wondering if it would have been better to urge his master to wait. _The Sith are not to be taken lightly, afterall._

His master suddenly barrel rolled out of the way as several laser blasts. The padawan kept himself calm as his vision blurred before focusing on the Sith fighter which had somehow made an incredibly sharp u-turn and was now close on their tail. He let loose a volley of laser fire from the rear guns, following the Ship and focusing more on preventing it from getting a shot rather than destroying it. It had seemed like the ship was beginning to pull away from their rear when suddenly it swooped back in at a lightning pace and fired its own volley of laser fire.

"Watch it boy!" His master yelled, "I should have gone alone, I would have shot him down by now."

The padawan took a moment to center himself, wondering how such an arrogant man could be accepted into the Jedi Order. His stomach lurched slightly as they made their own u-turn. The shields were shot, but had absorbed most of the laser fire, the astrodroid's head was spinning around and sparks were flying out of its dome with the exertion of maintaining the ship.

Both fighters were moving in a tight loop now, the Jedi fighter behind the Sith. "Break the loop master, I'll get him as he flies over us." There were a few seconds of silence before his master seemed to decide this was a worthy strategy and he felt the g-forces let up as they broke their continuous loop and continued on straight. As expected though their target remained moving in the circular motion, and as he passed overhead the padawan fired several shots, each making contact with the Sith starfighter.

"I'm going at it head-on," his master said, making another u-turn so that now both ships were once again headed straight towards each other. But the distance between them was much greater now than before. It was a complete suicide run. Both fighters fired their lasers at each other, and both hit their marks before the padawan even had the chance to convince his master not to go through with it.

Both ships had caught fire, their engines were quickly failing and they were losing momentum. The sight of the white crater-filled moon loomed in front of the Jedi padawan as both ships began to plummet towards the blue-green planet below, ignorant to the battle overhead. But as they fell, the Sith ship was still behind them. It fired several more times before they plummeted in different directions, shaking violently as they entered Earth's atmosphere.

* * *

Author's Notes: Now I know what you're thinking. Oh god, he's going in that direction. Why did he not tell me this was going to be one of those fanfics so I could have spent the time it took to read this on something actually worth reading? Well, I have to admit this is a bit of a self-insertion Fanfiction in the sense that one of the characters is based heavily off of me, but I would like to think the quality and storyline I have planned won't be as bad as some other self-inserts I've read (First off, I promise not to start a romantic relationship with Leia, or some other chick). In the long run I suppose I didn't need to include Earth at all, but since I planned to include other galaxies I thought "why not?" I promise that once they get off earth you won't even remember it. Main storyline can stand alone of all the earth stuff but I wanted to experiment with the idea. So if you're not feeling so good about this, please read a few more chapters before making a final decision.


	2. Chapter I

Chapter One

Dan was lying again beneath the stars, entertaining some kind of romantic idea that floated about in his mind. Beneath the night sky, silently lying on a hillside inspiration came to him like spring to flowers. Often times he would lie here, reveling in the wonderful feeling of lying in the dark in secret, concocting fantastic stories in his mind that excited him more than anything else in his dreary, normal life. He hated it.

Despite the wonderful adventures he would imagine, and how they made his heart beat faster and a smile explode off his face, he couldn't stand the sensation. Every other night he would come here and imagine, but it only made his longing to live in such worlds worse. It was like a perverted paraplegic man staring at the most beautiful, voluptuous woman he had ever seen. It ultimately just made his longing worse, and the harsh reality that such things would never come true made him almost suicidal.

But despite the agony that always followed, he could not deny himself the joy of creating such scenarios in his mind, or reading about them in a book, or playing them in a game, or watching them in a movie. No matter how much he tried to resist, he always found himself flipping another page, watching another cut-scene, pushing in another DVD, or laying still beneath the stars in this very same field. Just like tonight.

He had so deeply wished for escape from reality - to break the laws of the natural world – ever since he was a kid. He had sat on the river-stone path near his house, sitting in the meditative state he had read about, and tried to move the tiny stones with his mind. He had, as many teenagers of his generation, waited eagerly for his acceptance letter to Hogwarts and was just a little more crushed than the other children when it eventually didn't come, convincing himself it was lost in the mail, that America's wizarding school didn't accept students till much later, or some other excuse. In elementary school he had desperately searched for a poke-mon hiding in his back yard. But as he grew older and older, a bitter sadness stained his soul as he began to accept that nothing extraordinary was ever going to happen.

He closed his eyes, weaving his fingers through the grass as he stretched out his arms and legs. He grasped the clumps in his hands like a lover would their partner's hair during flights of passion, and let go with a sigh. He loved nature, and found that when he took a hike along the familiar paths of Kennesaw Mountain or snuck out to lay in the fields it restored his soul somewhat. Nature, like the literature classes he loved so much, was much like Dan's church.

He sometimes imagined how wonderful it would have been to be a Native American. Before the whites came of course, he wasn't stupid. How fantastic it would be to run along the same mountain paths, living a simple life uncomplicated by cell phones and cars and technology? No, it wouldn't be a picnic hunting your own food and avoiding other aggressive tribes, but the thought of running through the forests, unscarred by streets or buildings, caused every ounce of stress to leave his body. In those times, fantasy was still possible. Myth was alive around them, because the world itself was unknown. Now all the dark secrets of the world were exposed by monotonously buzzing fluorescent lights.

He stared longingly at the sky, deeply desiring to escape this rock and travel across the universe to some other unknown place. He wanted to visit all the planet that hung in the sky, to walk along the starlit path above him. He wanted to run through virgin fields and virgin forests, to forge his own path through unexplored wilderness. Though surprisingly he didn't believe in god, he would find himself guiltily begging that some power would intervene and send him something extraordinary.

Something flickered amongst the stars. It was like a star had emerged from behind the moon, drifting across the night sky, steadily growing. It suddenly broke into two parts, one zooming ahead of the other. He suddenly realized he could hear it falling, like the sound of all the planes that came in and out of the nearby airforce base, blazing thunder across the sky. The star seemed to be on fire, and as it neared closer he realized it wasn't a star at all.

He thought he had lost it. He wondered if all that longing to escape reality had only driven him insane, making his imagination come to life in vivid hallucinations. It was a ship. A space ship.

It tried to even out and soften the landing, but it was badly damaged and zoomed off into the distance, crashing into some nearby woods with less noise than he would have thought. He thought he could hear a tree snapping in the distance.

Then suddenly he remembered the second half, and looked up just as the second ship - harder to see because it was black – came barreling towards him. He began to run, realizing that it was going to crash near him, but he had taken too much time. It slammed into the ground nearby. Bits of the metal hull and broken glass exploded out at him as he raised his arms in front of him in defense, the materials cutting deep into his soft arms but not causing any serious damage. As he lowered his arms, which by now were beginning to bleed more than he had ever bled anywhere else, he realized the pilot had been ejected from the cockpit by the crash and was lying several feet from the crashed ship.

Forgetting for the moment the impossibility of the situation he ran forward, all the while thinking it was impossible for anyone to have survived that kind of crash. Strangely enough though the man's body didn't seem mangled, though like his ship his dark clothing made it difficult to really make out his figure in the darkness. He ran up to the motionless figure, shouting "are you alright?!"

He crouched down, pressing his fingers clumsily on the man's neck to try and find a pulse. Somehow he was alive. He noticed the skin on the man's face was strangely cracked with black lines running along it like veins. He didn't think it was the result of the fire, and in fact couldn't see any real damage the man had sustained other than a few cuts from flying through the windshield. He took off his shirt and began ripping it up to use it as a substitute for bandages, placing his hands on the man's worst cuts to stem the bleeding. Between the both of them things got so messy he couldn't tell whose blood was whose. "I hope you don't have HIV," he said to himself, giving him another shake to wake him up.

The man wasn't responding, and he was about to leave to call the police before noticing a strange cylindrical piece of equipment laying only a few feet next to the motionless pilot. _Is that a lightsaber?_ It suddenly darted towards him, and he leapt away as it flew past him to the now standing pilot, who ignited it so the glowing red-orange blade was inches from his throat. There was a moment's pause where Dan's heart pumped faster than it ever had before, when without warning the Dark Jedi scoffed, turned off his saber, and force pushed him down to the ground. His head hit a rock, and the pain caused him to lose focus and snap his eyes shut. As he opened them again, the ship had lifted back into the air, hovered for a moment above him like some dark angel, and shot off into the night.


	3. Chapter II

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Their blades crossed with a crack and Jason quickly turned around again, using the momentum of the movement and his well-toned muscles to send a crushing blow at his opponent, who despite her small feminine frame was able to match his strength and defend herself from the blow.

There was a moist splintering sound as his tree-limb broke against his opponent and exploded across the forest floor and splashed as they fell into the nearby stream. He growled in frustration, chunking the broken stick into the distance. His opponent rolled her eyes, throwing her own 'weapon' on the ground. "I don't see why you're getting mad. I told you that it was going to break. For crying out loud Jason, it was a water-logged rotten pine," Emma said, crossing her arms in frustration at the boy's immaturity.

Jason didn't say anything but focused on calming himself down. He'd picked the stick because it obviously was larger and weighed more, and he was convinced that was all he needed. He'd been beaten by Emma countless times, and beaten her in turn but every time he always got pissed. They had been best friends since elementary school, where they had met at a martial arts class. Both of them had a passion for competition, and as one of them discovered some new sport they would share it with the other. In fact they shared everything they did, playing the same video games, and watching the same movies and T.V. shows. They had shared in the same fads in elementary school, traded beanie babies and pokemon cards, gone to watch the Star Wars movies together and had even pretended to be Jedi at one point, coming in these woods with their plastic lightsabers and dueled each other.

They had joined a fencing class a long time ago, because they had enjoyed their little play-duels so much. As they entered high school they had joined the same teams, Emma becoming the first female wrestler at their school. Jason was her only real peer, as the other boys shied away or tried to treat her like a 'girl.'

But Jason had never seen her as below him. In fact he considered no one but her his equal. Growing up he had never given her any different treatment because of her sex, almost completely ignoring it until puberty began where he suddenly began to notice her exquisite curves and rapidly swelling feminine assets.

"Stop being such a bad sport," She said with an irritated sigh, knowing that he'd ignore her like he had all the other hundred times.

It just made him angrier she could so calmly shrug off a defeat and told him to not take things so seriously. She never seemed to take anything too seriously, from their little fights to the occasional advance he would make. She shrugged off each without a care, ignoring them as if they had never happened, as if they were entirely insignificant.

"Come on," She said, giving him a rather hard shove on the shoulder as she ran past him, leaping in a single bound over the small river.

He chased after her, leaping over the river himself though as his foot made contact with the soft ground it gave and nearly sent him falling into the stream. He managed to avoid the embarrassment of getting soaked and took off after her. He had to catch up or she would get to the tree first and he'd have to catch up.

They had found a fantastic magnolia tree sitting in the middle of the forest surrounded by pines that was fantastic for climbing. They had even built a makeshift tree house near the top, a place for them to rest after their inevitable race to reach the highest branch first.

Emma had stopped though, standing just at the end of the path they had beaten during their regular races to the tree. There was an unusual amount of light around her considering the dense foliage, and as he got closer he could see that several trees had been either broken in half or had toppled over. "Jason," She said, moving her neck as if she wanted to look back at him, but couldn't.

As he walked up to her side he could see it, with their tree broken in half over it like a sprung mouse trap. "What do you think it is?" Jason said as he glanced over at Emma, whose eyes were still locked on it. "Do you think its something from the air-base? Some kind of secret project?"

"I don't know," Emma said, although she didn't think this was just some kind of new aircraft design. "They would have been here by now it if was, they would have this place crawling with military officials- Oh my god." She said, her eyes widening. "They're probably still inside!" She bounded forward, and even now Jason couldn't help but notice how she looked like a doe as she sprinted.

"Wait Emma," He said reaching out his hand. But she was already struggling to pull off the cockpit hood.

"Jason, help me."

He quickly jumped up on top of the unknown craft, noting the black marks that seemed to signal some kind of smoke damage that covered the hull. He began to help her with taking the hood off. It quickly popped off with their combined strength and smoke drifted out of the hold. They were surprised to hear coughing, and Jason reached in to grab the figure of a man, pulling him out as Emma went in to pull out the boy who was coughing.

As Jason lay the man down near the craft he got a good look at him. The man was burned badly, and he felt his stomach lurch as he was about to throw up. He reached his fingers out to a small patch of skin that wasn't seared, and felt for a pulse. There was none. "Oh my god," Jason whispered, surprised at the shaking in his voice. _Come on, snap out of it, be a man. _

He glanced over the man's body, noticing that he was wearing some kind of robe. Something reflected the sunlight. "Emma?" he said, reaching out to take the metal cylinder, pressing his thumb on the small switch. The lightsaber buzzed to life, confirming his suspicions. "Oh my god."

"The Sith," he heard a raspy voice say turning to look at the younger Jedi who was grabbing Emma's sleeve. "Listen," he said in earnest, and Emma locked eyes with him in sympathy, completely unfazed by his face, caked in blood or his struggling breaths.

"Its ok," she said soothing, running her fingers through his hair lovingly despite the blood. "Rest."

The young Jedi frowned, and she slowly put his head down as his hand slid down her arm. His breathing increased for a moment, becoming frantic, before it finally weakened again, and stopped.

"Emma," he said, wincing as his voice was shaking again. "This can't be real, this… This can't be real!"

"Well I'm pretty sure it's not a dream," She said, moving her hand down to his belt and taking the lightsaber there.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm taking his lightsaber."

"Emma, he's dead."

"Exactly, he doesn't need it," she ignited the blade, making a note of its length and green color before turning it off and putting it in her pocket. "Didn't you hear him," She said when she noticed his critical gaze. "There's a Sith. We need to protect ourselves." She ran over to the fighter and began to search it for something of use.

"But Emma, this is impossible. This is all stuff from a movie, it can't be real." He didn't know what to say, this was all too much to absorb and he was still convinced this was some kind of trick or a dream. In shock, he silently followed her example, slipping the blue lightsaber into his pocket. He stared around perplexed before his eyes glanced up to the sky, which was suddenly seemed changed.


	4. Chapter III

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Even before he could really see he felt the weightless freedom of being underwater. The sensation was so close to what he imagined flying might be like that he had spent long hours in the nearby pool, swimming and drifting through the water without destination that eventually the rough cement lining ripped the bottom of his feet to shreds.

But he wasn't in a pool now. Around him were floating other teenagers his age, swimming around in a small grotto filled with water. All of them seemed to ignore him as they darted about through the water, zigzagging through strange underwater trees. He dove down through the pristine water to one of the trees, making out a distinct human face, its eyes closed as if it were sleeping contently, sealed within the wood. He looked around, noticing that as time went the others seemed to age, their skin suddenly taking on the wooden look of the trees that were firmly rooted on the floor.

All of them sunk to the bottom without a fight, content to grow into trees themselves and thrive peacefully off the bottom. Suddenly Dan felt himself become heavy as well, and his limbs suddenly begin to lock in place, making it harder and harder to move. In panic he thrashed about in desperation, looking up towards the surface as he sank deeper and deeper, desperate not to be trapped, rooted into the ground unable to escape like the others.

He sat up quickly, his long hair flying in front of his face and sticking to the sweat. His breathing was rapid as he pushed the hair out of his face and glanced over at the alarm clock in the dark. 5:59. He moaned, pressing his hands against his face when the next minute passed and the alarm was set off at 6:00. He slammed the snooze button and put his face in hands, rubbing it to try and wake himself up. His mind drifted back to his dreams, which seemed so vivid he wasn't sure if they had been dreams at all. The dream where the starship had crashed was especially vivid, but he convinced himself that it was impossible for it to be true. "There was a guy with a lightsaber for crying out loud. What are you thinking?" He said to himself as he lay back down for a moment and winced as his torn arms, wrapped clumsily in bandages, were racked in pain.

He was suddenly breathless, remembering how the shrapnel from the crash had torn his arms, how his blood had mixed with the Sith's. He sat up again, jumping out of bed and run upstairs to wake his mother up to go to school. As he came back down to his room to change his clothes his mind kept running over the events, trying to make sense out of them.

How was it possible that there could be a Sith here? How would George Lucas of all people know about that? Maybe it was some kind of subconscious thing, something from the collective subconscious. Maybe George Lucas was a Jedi… No that was idiotic. "Of course, I could just have lost my mind. Maybe I went into a fit and attacked myself and the rest was just my imagination." He glanced down at his bandages, which would probably need changing soon, as blood was already staining the upper layers. He went to his closet, looking for something with long enough sleeves. The only thing he had that probably still fit him was a black turtleneck that his mom had bought him for Christmas but he didn't wear because he thought it made him look like one of those 'artistic' types at coffee shops writing poetry and smoking their cigarettes.

He sighed, realizing that there was no other option; otherwise everyone would think he'd tried to commit suicide over the weekend. He slipped the sweater over his head, and immediately felt like he was on fire. It was going to be a long couple of weeks until his arms finally healed.

The sound of frantic stomping above him distracted him from his misery and he opened the door, walking upstairs from his basement room to the kitchen. His mother was throwing clothes around, letting out desperate cries as if she had lost her wedding ring. "Mom what's wrong?" He said more out of obligation than real concern.

"I can't find anything to wear!" She screamed out as if someone were dying, and he struggled not to roll his eyes. "I don't have any clean clothes and we're going to be late because I have nothing to wear!"

"Mom, you have several closets full of clothes and none of those are good enough?"

She gave him a flabbergasted look as she fumbled for a good explanation. He couldn't help but notice the dark circles of her eyes caused by yesterdays smeared makeup. That combined with her hair, sticking out in all directions, made her seem like a mental patient. "Well none of those match!" She said, waving her arms over her head like a frustrated chimp.

"I'm just going to walk to school." He said, because he knew he would go crazy himself if he had to deal with her overdramatics for the rest of the morning. He turned around, hoping he would get out the door before she had the chance to-

"No, you can't leave me!" She said, as if he were her husband and had just declared that he was divorcing her. "I need you to HELP me!"

He paused, feeling the heat of anger flashing over him. "Mom, what do you want me to do, dress you?"

"I don't know." She said going back to her pile of clothes and throwing them across the room.

"Mom, will you calm down, its not that big of a deal."

"Fine, leave then." She said dismissively with a primal kind of growl in her voice.

He let out an exasperated sigh and walked out the door. As he walked through the cool morning air, he tried to let what little comfort nature could give calm him. But he felt himself ever boiling over with anger and frustration. Every morning was like this, and each day was filled with his mother's 'crises' which were in fact just daily trials that most people resolved in minutes. Every single mishap was suddenly made into an earth-shattering disaster, and it made him so sick and angry that it took him hours to calm down afterwards.

When at last his anger subsided, he was suddenly stricken by a desperate feeling of loneliness that made him want to lie down in the street he was walking along. He took a moment to stop by a tree and sit with his back against the trunk. He planted his face in his hands as he let loose a shaking sigh. There had been a time when his mother had been his best friend, and now that she had lost her mind he felt incredibly alone. Worse yet, there was no one to talk to. His stepfather, who he suspected was mildly retarded, didn't have the attention span to carry on a conversation and would literally walk away in the middle of one. At school, most of his friends were more like acquaintances, he had a very large spectrum of people he was friends with, but none of them had a strong connection with him. So his anger, frustration, and sadness was left to simmer within him with no where to go. He'd once been such a happy person, proud because of his ability to show kindness to almost anyone. But isolation had caused his soul to become stained, and no matter what he tried he couldn't strip the thick grime from his heart.

All of this had seemed such a small thing at first, but when he was forced to deal with it every day several times a day, combined with the responsibility of caring for his mother as if she were a child, it quickly build up to something entirely unbearable. As he planted his face in his hands, he wanted so terribly to cry and let out all the pressure that was building in him, but found that no tears would come.

A flash of lightning lit the dark morning, and the thunder that rolled over his skin made him feel somewhat relieved, as if nature's roar somehow were an expression of his own frustration. He sighed, feeling somewhat relieved, and stood up to begin walking to school again, walking along the street and looking at the houses. The quiet gave him a chance to once again reflect on what had happened two nights ago. It still seemed too much to grasp, and he wondered if his own desperation to escape the confines of his reality had pushed him over the edge.

He sighed, glancing down a driveway where a few scattered leaves left over from autumn swirled in a whirlwind, a plastic back dancing amongst the leaves in graceful silence. Dan watched as it made its silent, sad dance through the air, and waved his finger around as if conducting it, fancying that somehow he could control it. Suddenly, his finger froze, and he felt his heart skip a beat before returning to beat with the same intensity it had two nights ago.

As his finger drifted about, the bag followed without fault, dancing just as he commanded it to. He let his hand drop, and the bag fell lifeless to the ground. His mind was racing, before he laughed and shook his head, walking down the street again. "No, that's crazy."


End file.
